Azza Elsheikh is a New Yorker through and through. So she was surprised when she fell in love with the Kelley School of Business and Bloomington, Ind.

At Kelley she found a tight-knit community of faculty and students. Seeing those relationships was powerful to Elsheikh. She didn’t find that sort of support as an undergraduate student in New York City.

“As an undergrad in New York, you walk in the school, you sit down in the class, and you leave. I told myself that I needed a different MBA experience,” she says. “Kelley and the Consumer Marketing Academy are all about networking, making genuine friends, keeping in touch, and building relationships.”

From her earliest interactions with Kelley at recruiting events, Elsheikh knew the CMA was for her and kept in touch with the directors while deciding among schools.

“Jonlee Andrews was helping me with contacts in my industry of choice before I even came to Kelley. You can’t fake that sort of genuineness,” she says. “It’s not networking for the sake of networking. These people care.”

Elsheikh developed her course load and experiences to reflect her interest in media and the services industry. The well-rounded look at marketing she received helped her land a job at American Express.

Her experience outside of New York City made her better able to understand the customers she’ll be working with.

“It’s not just about the hipster who lives on the Lower East Side or the banker in Tribeca, it’s also about the mom in middle America who goes shopping and how she views the world,” she says. “I needed to learn more about that lifestyle in order to fulfill my marketing career goals. In Bloomington you can see that—it’s real life.”

Elsheikh found other ways to explore consumer markets and behaviors while she was at Kelley. In the spring of her second year she traveled to Brazil as part of the Kelley MBA exchange program.

“Brazil will be one of the largest economies in the world by 2050, and I had the experience of living there and understanding one of the fastest-growing consumer markets in the world,” she says. “I saw how Brazilians live day to day. The travel experience is going to allow me to have a better understanding of what I’m tackling at American Express and beyond.”